Bankruptcy Lunacy
Matt Taibbi has another great column this week on the recently passed bankruptcy bill. You know, the bill that the credit card industry has been bribing Congress to back. Here’s an excerpt:
But my absolute favorite is the amendment, proposed by Bill Nelson of Florida, to exempt from means testing individuals whose debts were incurred as a result of identity fraud. It would be hard to imagine any legitimate objection to this amendment. The only rational objection to this amendment would be that your tongue is so far up the ass of MBNA [the world's largest independent credit card issuer]that you can’t possibly vote for it. Which says something about the Senate; the amendment was crushed, 61-37.
Among the Democrats who voted “Nay” to that amendment were Carper, who received $86,107 from credit card companies last year, and our Capra-esque civic hero Biden, who received a total of $144,700 between 1999 and 2004 — far more than he received from any other industry.
Nothing makes a citizen spontaneously belt out a verse of “America the Beautiful” in the middle of the fishing tackle and hunting aisle of their local Wal-Mart more than legislation championing the poor, weary, down trodden credit card and banking industry